Focus Areas

Projects

Swift 3.0 Release Process

This post describes the goals, release process, and estimated schedule for Swift
3.0.

Swift 3.0 is a major release that is not source-compatible with Swift 2.2. It
contains fundamental changes to the language and Swift Standard Library. A
comprehensive list of implemented changes for Swift 3.0 can be found on the
Swift evolution
site.

Swift 3.0 is also the first release to include the Swift Package Manager. While the Swift Package Manager is still early
in its development, it supports the development and distribution of
cross-platform Swift packages. The Swift Package Manager will be available on
both Darwin and Linux.

Swift 3.0 is expected to be released sometime in late 2016. In addition to its
Swift.org release, Swift 3.0 will ship in a future version of Xcode.

Developer Previews

Swift 3.0 will have a series of developer previews (i.e., “seeds” or “betas”)
that provide qualified and converged builds of Swift 3. The goal is to
provide users with more stable and qualified Swift binaries that they can
download and try out (and file bugs against)
instead of just grabbing the latest snapshot of master.

The cadence between Developer Previews will likely be irregular, but likely
every 4-6 weeks. They will be partially driven by the volume of change going
into master and how much time is needed to stabilize a developer preview
branch.

Swift 3.0 will be declared “GM” from the last developer preview branch.

Content going into developer previews will be managed by the appropriate
release manager (see below).

Getting Changes into Swift 3.0

Branches

master: Development of Swift 3.0 happens in master. All changes
going in master will be part of the final Swift 3.0 release until the
last developer preview branch is created. At that point master tracks
development for future Swift releases.

swift-3.0-preview-<X>-branch: Branches for developer previews will be
created from master. All changes to those branches will need to be submitted
via pull requests that initiate testing on continuous integration. The release
manager for the given repository approves merging a pull request into the
developer preview branch.

swift-3.0-branch: The last developer preview branch created from master
will be called swift-3.0-branch. This will be the final “release branch”.

Philosophy on Taking Changes into Swift 3.0

As Swift 3.0 converges only changes that align with the core goals of the
release will be considered.

Source-breaking changes to the language will be
considered on a case-by-case basis.

All language and API changes for Swift 3.0 will go through the Swift
Evolution process.

Criteria — as set by the release manager — for accepting changes
will becoming increasingly restrictive over time as the release
converges. The same policy applies to developer preview branches, which
are essentially mini-releases.

Schedule

The first developer preview branch swift-3.0-preview-1-branch will
be created from master on May 12. It will be released 4-6 weeks
later.

The date for creating the last developer preview branch
— swift-3.0-branch — has
not yet been established. When that date is determined the plan will be
communicated both on swift-dev and by updating this post.

Impacted Repositories

The following repositories will have
swift-3.0-preview-<X>-branch/swift-3.0-branch branches to track
sources as part of Swift 3.0 release:

Release Managers

The overall management of the release will be overseen by the following
individuals, who will announce when stricter control of change
goes into effect for the Swift 3.0 release as the release converges: